What is Halo.car and what problem is it aiming to solve

According to Anand, carbon emissions are the biggest problem that we need to solve for humanity. There are massive climate goals that we need to hit for the planet by 2030 and if we are to meet these milestones, we need to radically rethink transportation and move towards the electrification of all vehicles. 

To unpack what’s happening, Anand reveals that the biggest problem in the electrification market is the barrier of car ownership that’s preventing rapid acceleration for masses into electric cars. The only way a consumer gets access to an electric vehicle today is via private car ownership. This typically means investing $40,000 to purchase an EV and taking considerations to retrofit your home with a charging infrastructure, which not everybody is able to afford. Anand points out that when we generally buy a car, it’s parked on average for 23 hours in the day, or 96% of a car’s lifetime. This poses a sustainability problem as EV production today is still in its infant stages and involves a highly resource-intensive manufacturing process. About 800 tonnes of carbon dioxide are emitted for every EV that is produced on the production line today, accounting for 10+ years to offset that carbon with a utilization rate of just one hour of driving per day. 

The equation has to flip somewhere to make EVs highly utilized and that is the main problem that Halo is solving. After three and a half years, the company recently launched their first commercial service, resembling an interesting merge between a Zipcar and a rideshare service. Customers use the app to request a car and Halo will remotely drive an all-electric vehicle to their doorstep, wherever they are. Once it gets there, the customer can hop in the driver’s seat, take over the car, and drive it to wherever they want to go. Upon arrival at their destination, the customer is able to hop out without worrying about parking before Halo’s team remotely connects to the car and drives it to the next customer. The best of both worlds becomes having the benefits of a car share service and rideshare service combined into one product.

A vision for the future of mobility and urban design

Anand drew his inspiration for Halo from his experiences of growing up in India and taking the train everywhere. He describes getting off at train stations in India, where 50-100 different auto rickshaws would be conveniently waiting to take groups of people to their last-mile destinations. When he came to the US, he noticed the cultural change, the addiction to cars and car ownership. Anand is not saying it’s wrong, but it’s just not sustainable. 

The vision that Anand sees is a multimodal way to get around anywhere. The federal government has invested trillions towards public transit systems, but they’re heavily underutilized because of mass problems. People can’t get from their homes to a public transit system, and tracking schedules becomes another issue. Halo’s success would look like not only replacing the whole concept of car ownership, but also multimodal transportation options. Ananda examines replacing current unsustainable methods with EVs that could be charged at local charging stations that generate local energy and also helping to increase the utilization of public transit systems, while reducing the carbon footprint for the last mile drastically. A reduction in car ownership would also mean less parking structures in city centers, making room for more affordable housing and walkable spaces. In another vision, Anand suggests ideas for a subscription model that could encompass everything on the first mile, last mile and a public transit system.

Resources Mentioned

• Halo.car

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